by Laken Cane
Her jaw dropped. “Holy shit. She’s in Reverence and she’s calling the zombies to help her.”
“If Fie is in Reverence, then it’s the Shop that has her. Bring her back, Rune.”
“I’ll update you as soon as I can.”
“And Rune…”
“You never called me,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“What is it?” Lex asked again. She was vibrating slightly, her cheeks flushed. Her crazy blind eyes were sluggish in their dance.
“Zombies are attacking our favorite town in Kentucky, and Rice thinks that’s Fie’s doing. Let’s go get our baby necromancer.”
Strad strode from the kitchen. “Weapon up,” he called back over his shoulder. “Be ready to go in five minutes.”
“Ellie—” Rune started.
He held up his cell. “I’m calling Raze and Jack now. I’ll have them meet you in Reverence.”
She pressed her lips together when they felt a little trembly. “Thanks, Ellie.”
He winked and began muttering into the phone as she raced from the kitchen to get ready.
They left their crew cars at home and drove their personal cars. “Ride with me, Lex,” Rune said, and Lex jumped into the passenger seat almost before Rune had finished her sentence.
Raze called as Rune was leaving her driveway. “Lex with you?”
“Yeah, baby. We’ll see you over there.”
“Was that Raze?” Lex asked, after Rune hung up.
“It was.” Rune gave her a sidelong glance. “What’s up with you two?”
“Nobody knows.”
“Sounds about normal.”
“Our normal,” Lex replied, “is pretty fucked up.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Annex lost Fie?”
“They didn’t lose her, she was stolen. And Eugene wasn’t having any luck getting her back.”
“Why didn’t he want to send us to pick her up?”
“He’s willing to sacrifice her to get rid of his enemy.”
Neither of them was surprised.
“She’ll be okay,” Lex said. “Everyone will be okay.”
“Yeah.” Even with everything going on, she should have dug more deeply into Fie’s circumstances. “We’ll get her back.”
“It’s starting to feel like we’re fighting the side we’re on, Rune.”
Rune smiled. “Starting? It’s been feeling that way to me since…” Since forever. Since she’d been born, maybe. What the fuck was a right side, anyway? You did what you had to do, and most of the time, that wasn’t what everyone else wanted you to do.
Fuck them.
“We’re the side we’re on,” she finished. “And that’s all we know for sure.”
It seemed to take her a million years to drive to Reverence. Straggling zombies began appearing half an hour before they reached the actual town.
Slowly lurching with dogged determination along the abandoned white road, they ignored Rune’s car as she drove by them. She ran some of them over as they were disinclined to the move the hell out of the way.
She was in a hurry.
Her cell buzzed. “Berserker,” she said. “Do you see them?”
“Yes. I’m in town. They’re all walking in a long line, quietly. They don’t seem hungry.”
“She’s in their heads,” Rune told him. “Their only purpose is to reach her.”
“Can you control them?”
“I don’t know. My control over them isn’t as strong as it once was. Fie is much stronger.”
She could almost hear him shrug. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t drive into the woods, which is where they’re headed. I’m on foot.”
“Lex and I are right behind you.”
She drove as far as she could before the trees became too thick to manage, then she and Lex jumped from the SUV and began running, following the line of zombies through the woods.
She didn’t try to kill them. She had her claws out, but that was only to cut a path for her and Lex.
Chances were Fie’s handlers had already moved her, but maybe they’d been stopped by the zombies.
That was the hope Rune held on to.
Some of the zombies crumbled, losing body parts, but dug their bony fingers into the dirt and crawled on. They clacked their teeth, but their voices were silent.
Then Raze was there, giving Lex and Rune a sharp once over before punching a slow moving zombie out of his way. “Go, Rune. I’ll keep Lex company.”
Lex ignored both of them and kept pushing onward. Eventually, she’d get through the crowd, but Rune could get there a lot faster.
“Don’t get bitten,” Rune whispered.
“I’ll take care of her,” Raze said. “Go.”
She nodded at Raze and took off, the monster she’d been born with lending her his speed.
Shortly, she arrived where the earlier zombies had congregated, and for a moment she just watched them.
A huge hill stood before them, covered in trees and green, but the zombies weren’t attempting to climb it. Maybe they had no idea how to.
There were no buildings, no cars, no signs of humans.
But then she saw the zombies in the front ramming their fragile bodies over and over against the hard wall of the embankment, and she understood exactly where Fie was.
The Shop had built themselves a bunker inside the hill.
She had no idea how to infiltrate it.
But somewhere inside that impenetrable, rocky mound waited little Fie, and if Rune had to dig her way in with her claws, she would get the kid out.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rune shoved a zombie out of her way and strode to the hillside. It would have been difficult finding the entrance in the best of circumstances, but with mounds of zombies trying to push themselves into the hill, it was next to impossible.
She looked up to see the berserker charging toward her, slinging zombies away as he came.
She went to meet him. “You found the entrance?”
“No. It’s not here. Fie is on the other side of this wall, but the entrance…” He turned, narrowing his eyes, staring at the top of the moon-bathed hill. “Follow me.”
She didn’t hesitate but ran with him up the side of the hill. The hill leveled out, then rose again, and it was on that second rise that he stopped her.
“There,” he said.
“Bastards,” she muttered. Keeping Fie inside the cold, dark earth, with no sunshine or friendly people…the child would be desperate.
Steel doors were placed into a wide swath of concrete wall. She wasn’t sure even she could kick her way through them.
“They’re following us,” Strad said, nodding at something behind her.
She turned to look. The zombies had begun to climb up the hill, making their slow, inexorable way to the entrance.
She put her palm against the cool metal of the door. “Anything could be in there.”
“I’m here,” said Jack, jogging toward them. “What do we have?” Then he took a long look at the gleaming doors. “Well that might make things more complicated.”
“No kidding.” She took a deep breath, then gave the door an experimental punch.
The door didn’t give, but she had to hold back a whimper of pain as the impact broke the bones in her hand and shook her entire body.
Strad took her hand and ran his thumb over her skin as the zombies began to gather at their backs. One of them stumbled to Jack and would have taken a bite from his arm if he hadn’t moved.
“Shit,” Rune said. “She’s losing control.” And if that happened, the crew was in trouble.
Raze and Lex forced their way through the crowd.
“I found the entrance,” Lex said, her voice strained.
“This is the entrance,” Rune said. “But I can’t break it.”
“That’s a dummy door,” Lex told her. “Don’t forget where I come from. I recognize the decoy. Come with me.”
Raze shrugged. “She…felt the entrance. We went there before we found you.”
Rune nodded, then broke into a run to catch up with Lex. The zombies were beginning to sound their eerie moans, and the little blind Other was right. They didn’t have all night.
They likely would not have found the real entrance had it not been for Lex and her ability to see things they could not.
The doors were hidden behind a copse of trees and camouflaged to match the greens and browns of the surroundings.
“I felt the heat,” Lex said. “There is someone standing close to those doors. Smoking. He’s human.”
The zombies picked up speed and lurched toward them. More zombies climbed the bank and suddenly, in the semidark, it looked as though the hill were undulating, spitting zombies from its bowels.
“Rune,” Jack said. “You might want to get us inside.”
She didn’t ask them if they were ready—they were always ready. She ran at the door and slammed her body against it like a truck hitting a fence.
The door flew inward with a scream of metal twisting and tearing, and the crew streamed inside.
The zombies were at their heels.
The inside of the bunker was surprisingly well-lit and, with its clean lines and lack of clutter, had a clinical feel to it.
The guard who’d been standing near the door lay lifeless on the floor, his arms flung over his head.
The long entryway opened into a short, sterile hallway, then into a large living area furnished with a couch and a few small chairs. A flat screen television hung silently on the wall.
“Split up,” she said. “Find the girl.”
Zombies became stuck in the entrance hall, then some of them finally managed to find their way through the doorway into the rest of the area.
Their moans became livelier, more vicious. Hungry.
And then, gunfire sounded from outside as new arrivals came to take out the zombies infiltrating the bunker. Probably an alarm had triggered when Rune smashed in the door.
She ground her teeth as she ran, shoving doors open, her heart pounding painfully against her stake scars.
In seconds she entered a huge, circular room with small doors spaced evenly around the walls.
The room was cavernous and cold with its white brick walls and stone floors. A drain had been set in the middle of the floor, its edges tinted with the stains of old blood.
She wanted to find Fie—that was all. Find the girl and get out before the enemy realized more than zombies had discovered their secrets.
Rescuing Fie was the only thing that mattered.
Until she shoved open one of the doors and found a room full of restrained pregnant girls. A dozen of them, all lying in cots with their wrists cuffed to metal rails.
Others.
Their faces were slack with disinterest, their eyes open but bleary and dull. The room had been laced with silver. Though she was immune, Rune could feel that silver trying to suck the life out of her.
The room stank of feces and vomit, and the once white sheets covering the girls were yellow from urine stains.
And the girls. The girls.
Rune shot out her claws and slashed the air, unable to suppress a scream of horrified rage.
“Rune,” Strad called from the doorway.
She spun around. “Berserker. These girls.” She couldn’t say anything else. There were no words.
They raced to the beds, Strad taking one row and Rune taking the other. She ripped cuffs from the bed, freeing skinny, bruised wrists.
“This one’s alive,” Strad called.
She straightened, her heart full of horror. “Aren’t they all?”
“No, sweetheart,” he said.
She’d known all along that some of those stares were empty. She hadn’t been able to admit it to herself. Not then.
“What about the babies?” she asked, as though he would know. As though maybe he would somehow make it right.
He shook his head. “The one I found alive just died.”
So she hardened her heart against the horror she was facing and got back to work. It was all she could do.
The girls wore white plastic bracelets on which was written a single number.
“Shit, Strad,” she cried. “This one’s having her baby.”
He strode to her, and they watched as the quiet mother delivered her baby. She needed no help. The child poured out in a gush of blood, a tiny Other with a limbless body, a too-small head, and a mouth it couldn’t close because it was full of half-formed fangs.
It jerked once, then went still.
As did its mother.
Rune shuddered. “Check the other ones,” she whispered.
“Found another one alive,” she said, ten seconds later, her voice calm. Her lips were numb and tingly, the way they’d gotten when she grabbed the electrified fence at the Camp.
The girl’s bracelet told Rune her number was thirteen.
“This is what happened to the girl the Annex found,” Strad said, leaning over another still form.
Rune nodded. Thirteen’s breathing was shallow, and as Rune watched, she opened her eyes. Rune saw the fear bloom like blood on a tissue.
“I’m going to get you out of here, baby.”
The girl didn’t appear to comprehend Rune’s words.
Just as Nine had, the pregnant Other began screaming.
And then, Rune saw the mound beneath the sheet begin to move, to ripple as though a snake had awakened and was now slithering off the huge belly.
But it wasn’t a snake.
The girl’s baby was coming.
And so were the zombies.
Fie had lost her control.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Rune found a whole other gear—there were too many things to think about, to fight, to do. So she shoved everything out but the immediate emergency, and that was delivering Thirteen’s baby.
That child wasn’t going to slide out with no trouble. It needed help.
Strad was at the door, cutting down zombies who wanted to get into the room. Who wanted to eat.
She had a second to silently plead, don’t get bitten, Berserker, and then her thoughts were all for the tormented Other on the cot.
Even when she heard the sound of gunfire drawing closer as the enemy began to break through the barricade of zombies, she ignored it.
A baby was coming, and she was about to help it into the world.
“Owen,” she heard Strad yell. “Behind you.”
Owen? Owen was in the hospital in River County.
Wasn’t He?
Focus, Rune.
The Other’s screams faded to a pitiful, whimpering moan. She tried to find the source of her pain with discolored, searching fingers, but her hand kept falling to the bed. The silvered room had drained her. Or maybe it was the baby who took all her strength.
Rune didn’t make a sound. She pushed the girl’s soiled hospital gown out of the way and waited. Watched, and waited.
“Rune,” Strad roared.
“Not yet, Berserker,” she whispered.
And then, black, curly hair showed as the baby began to force its way free.
Thirteen shrieked, a scream of pure agony that went on forever, and finally, the child was out.
And Thirteen stopped screaming. For good.
Rune lifted the baby from the mess of blood and fluids soaking the mattress. A girl. A tiny girl with thick black hair, wrinkled, red skin, and the smallest fingers Rune had ever seen.
“Well shit,” Rune murmured. “Look at that. A baby.”
“Rune,” Strad yelled again.
She didn’t want to leave the infant alone, but she wrapped it in the sheet and placed it carefully on the bed between its dead mother’s legs, umbilical cord still attached. “I’ll be back, kid.”
She streaked through the doorway, slamming it behi
nd her before shooting out her claws. The zombies seemed to think Fie was in the room. They piled on top of each other trying to get past Strad, who had pushed them back into the circle room.
A pale but grimly determined Owen hacked his way through them from the back of the room, but Rune saw no signs of Jack, Raze, or Lex.
At the sound of gunfire, she realized the other three crew members were keeping the enemy shooters occupied and out of the compound.
But it wouldn’t be long before her crew was overpowered by the number of Shop backup that was surely on the way. She had to find Fie, and get her and the baby out.
Owen worked his way toward her. “Find Fie,” he shouted. “We’ll take care of the zombies.”
She found Strad with her searching, desperate gaze. He stood head and shoulders above the slow zombies, his spear flashing as he used it to take out the monsters. Both ends boasted long, sharp silver, and the zombies fell as those blades spilt brains from broken skulls and separated heads from rotting bodies held upright by magic.
Fie’s magic.
She ran, slamming open doors and peering into closets. “Fie,” she shouted. “Where are you?”
Where the hell was she?
She was nowhere.
Finally, Rune ran back to Strad and Owen and grabbed a lurching male zombie on the fringe of the crowded room.
He careened off the hallway wall and fell, then began to drag himself up with torturous slowness.
There was a chance the zombie would lead her right to Fie.
“Come on, you bastard,” she muttered. “Get the fuck up.”
But after he finally found his feet, he lunged forward, trying to either get some dinner or go back the way he’d come.
“Fuck,” she screamed, and took off his head. One less monster to worry about.
“Rune,” Strad roared, and she ran with everything she had back to where she’d left him and Owen.
Jack, Lex, and Raze had arrived, but not to help with the zombies. The Shop shooters had forced them to retreat. There was no door to shut—Rune had destroyed it.
“We’re trapped,” Owen yelled.
Enemy shooters entered the room, blasting anything and everything they could see. Zombies fell beneath the thick spray of bullets.
The crew, using zombies for cover, began to back into the hallway.
“Keep searching,” Rune told them. “She’s here somewhere. She has to be.”